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said NASA Administrator Fletcher, "Would add up to a Mission to Planet Earth on a scale never before attempted to study any planet." But its success depends on the coordination of its components and the worldwide standardization and accessibility of their output. The challenge is immense and extremely time-critical. The new fleets of Earth observing spacecraft can provide vital and otherwise inaccessible information on interconnected environmental issues of growing concern to political decisionmakers, such as the greenhouse effect, ozone depletion, and deforestation. On the other hand, as the global standards working group pointed out, "many of the potential benefits of those extremely important (and costly) missions will be lost unless steps are taken to standardize their output and make it available to the world at large." The problem will intensify with the unprecedented flow of information generated by the polar platforms scheduled for the mid-1990's. The immediate decision by the senior officials group to inventory the capabilities of Earth observing spacecraft scheduled during the next decade, in preparation for specific ISY recommendations, reflected that sense of urgency. The inventory was recommended by the mission components working group and implemented by the senior officials group - not only to determine complementarities but also to discover gaps in coverage (and thus in needed information) that might be corrected. In a similar time-sensitive vein, the global change data objectives group recommended that agreement be sought from space agencies to carry instruments that measure pollution-causing atmospheric gases on their spacecraft at every opportunity. There was a general agreement among the working groups that the ISY effort to strengthen coordination and standardization should emphasize global issues, as mentioned, and also regional initiatives of particular relevance to developing nations, such as crop management and technical training. The conference delegates further agreed that the best mechanisms for achieving their objectives were sharply-focused pilot projects that set standards for worldwide application. To that end, they accepted the concept of Global Information System Test (GIST) and applied it to specific issues of immediate concern. The GIST concept, as described by the global change data objectives group, would involve demonstration projects "limited in scope but truly end-to-end tests of the conversation of data to useful information." GIST activities would include developing globally accessible formats for data collected by national systems as well as combining data from several sources in order to produce information not available otherwise. GISTs would be interdisciplinary and international. "The experience gained in (these projects) would be of inestimable value in the development of the much more ambitious plans for the data and information systems associated with the polar platforms," the global standards group concluded. A number of specific GIST proposals were presented. Two of them, originating in the environmental monitoring objectives group, were given priority. Both would establish globally applicable procedures for collecting and disseminating information while providing valuable new information on important environmental problems: • Greenhouse Effect Detection Project This project would involve collecting and integrating data on temperature, pressure, wind velocity, and humidity near the surface and in the atmosphere and comparing it against other indicators of global change, such as rainfall patterns, oceanic cloud cover, permafrost, lake levels, etc. • Deforestation Pilot Study This project would test the hypothesis that deforestation leads to desertification by using a combination of satellite and ground based data for Brazil and Africa. The other prommising GIST projects, in connection with the Tropical Ocean and Global Atmosphere Program (TOGA) and for measuring fields of ocean chlorophyll, presented by the global change objectives and global standards working groups, also received special attention. The social and economic development objectives group, with strong support from the senior officials group, emphasized the importance of ISY Earth observation initiatives extending beyond research to include immediate and direct applications for social and economic development. The group stated: "They key is to be aware of the ultimate social and economic applications from the beginning... When end to end information systems are designed, the final terminals must not be in research laboratories. The flow of information must extend to the users in the general community, and it must be in a form they can use." In that context, the group joined its counterparts in recommending ISY pilot projects as a "most practical means of initially directing space assets toward social and economic development projects." Specific recommendations included: • A multi-disciplinary atlas of Africa, integrating remote sensing information and other information useful for social and economic development. • A global land use map for land management and policy development, showing precisely for what purposes all the land of the globe is used. • A series of information designed to educate the public on the impact of global change. • A directory of remote sensing activities and information sources for distribution and use in conjunction with the ISY, that would be expanded and updated in ensuing years. Proposals for directories also came from the global change and mission components working groups. The global change group called for an ISY global change directory of 6
